Heart of Darkness was one of the most expensive games of the era with very significant budget overruns.

There's no way that Atari at that time would be remotely able to offer good terms to that developer.

Even if they got to second/third tier talks, it would have really quickly become obvious that jaguar is not the platform that makes any sense for them from commercial standpoint. Even in the most crazy jackpot scenario, they wouldn't recoup the port costs, let alone help the bottom line of the insane production costs.

As much as I am a fan of Jaguar, jag simply does not deserve a game of this caliber - it is truly a next-gen platformer. I have happily bought this game about 3 times on few platforms. Finished about a dozen times.

This game definitely suits Playstation better. Jag is better served with its Bubsian-Raymanesque platformers of the '70s-'80s era - which, "incidentally", correspond to the mentality of the management at Atari...

It lacks the kind of original elements you might expect to find in something designed from the ground up for cutting edge new hardware..

Something like Jumping Flash on Playstation is different, that was clearly developed with the increased 3D power of the 32 bit Playstation in mind from the start..entire game built around the 3D aspect.

Or Ape Escape..gameplay built around the dualshock controller..

Rayman is just a gorgeous, but frustrating platformer..raised the bar in 2D visuals, yes..but gameplay very familiar to anyone moving from SNES or MD to the Jaguar.

Reworking the art style,making sprites bigger and having far more colours on-screen, don't take the gameplay mechanics kicking and screaming into a new realm..

Starting to worry me here. All the really high-profile like anticipating games we're getting an no to.
Did I read that right did you acquire the Epyx titles?
I would have loved Updated temple of apshai.

There is absolutely no shame in a 16 bit era style 2D platformer being done on far more powerful hardware.

I lost count of the amount of 3D platform games where your biggest enemy was often the unwieldy camera system, let alone wonky controls, yet because 3D was seen as the future, that's where game went.

I'm a little bit surprised that Rayman being so firmly rooted in the 16 bit era of gaming, window dressing aside, needed to be explained.

SNES Donkey Kong Country had it's sprites etc rendered on £80,000 Silicon Graphics Workstations, rather than created using traditional methods, but that didn't make it any more than a basic 16 bit platformer either.

A lot of games start out with hardware specific features at heart of thier gameplay..Resident Evil 0 a prime example..character swapping element designed around N64 using cartridges,so no loading times, but end up moved to newer platforms, in that case the Game Cube..

That was an aspect that stood out for myself among the documents Scott sent, rather than the usual talk of projects cancelled, milestones not met, payment overdue etc, here was someone actively trying to get Atari interested in what he considered were the next big things coming out if Europe etc and would be ideally suited for the Jaguar and Jaguar CD.

The Jaguar library often takes a lot of flak for it's high percentage if Amiga /PC/console ports..things could of been different perhaps, had Atari invested money in securing a few titles pitched to them,as exclusives.

The updated Battlezone sounded promisingly, in an alternative world we could of seen that instead of Hoverstike. .

To be fair, I tgink Hoverstrike is one of the great Jag games. It seemex to run smoother on the CD version as well. There some decwnt exclusives for the system, but the straoght 68k ports didn't do it any justice, that is for sure.

On the note of Rayman on the ST. Wonder how that would have looked? Probably the best looming platform I had seen on the ST was Fire and Ice. Rayman has huge smsmcharacters in it and looks brilliant. I know there is a game for the Falcon that was started, but never finished that looks a lot like a prototype to Rayman, though the name eludes me at the moment.

I recall reading your search on Chuck Rock 2 for the ST. So many great games were canceled on the ST yet made it to the Amiga. I still see on lists that Pools of Radiance was released for it, though I think everyone has agreed that it never actually came out.

Yeah, made a good few attempts to get some sense from Core Design staff, regarding ST Chuck Rock II and UK press claims, Core planned a second Jaguar XJ220 game, but this one built around the polygon engine used in Thunderhawk..

To be fair, I tgink Hoverstrike is one of the great Jag games. It seemex to run smoother on the CD version as well. There some decwnt exclusives for the system, but the straoght 68k ports didn't do it any justice, that is for sure.

On the note of Rayman on the ST. Wonder how that would have looked? Probably the best looming platform I had seen on the ST was Fire and Ice. Rayman has huge smsmcharacters in it and looks brilliant. I know there is a game for the Falcon that was started, but never finished that looks a lot like a prototype to Rayman, though the name eludes me at the moment.